


Into the West Away

by 2ndA



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 19:48:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12239505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ndA/pseuds/2ndA
Summary: Written for a Dreamwidth Morseverse challenge requesting a missing scene to explain the S02-S03 transitions:"Anyone want to fill in the blanks between series 2 and 3 of Endeavour? Where does Monica go? Where does Tony Dobben come from? How does Morse end up in that summerhouse by the lake?"Title and epigraph are from the AE Housman poem  XVI (How clear, how lovely bright).  Not beta'd or Brit-picked, contains SPOILERS for action up to Season 3, Episode 1 (Ride)





	Into the West Away

_"Days lost, I know not how/_

_I shall retrieve them now"_

 

It takes twenty-six days for the Oxford constabulary to unwind the complex tangle of old crimes and new corruption that led to the fiasco at Blenheim Vale.  That’s _before_ the official inquiry panel is called, then delayed over the New Year’s holidays, and finally granted another two weeks to review the case and seal the results. Official word about the prisoner eventually comes down late on a Friday; the desk sergeant isn’t about to raise anyone senior on the telephone so, as a final insult, Morse is left imprisoned over the weekend.

At the time, he is convinced it’s out of sheer spite. Later, he will realize that the cause is much less complex.  Framing an unsociable junior detective constable for murder had been such an insignificant part of the shameful and sordid story that Morse had quite literally been...forgotten.  With no family worth mentioning, DI Thursday in hospital, and DCI Bright less popular with the brass than he likes to think himself, there had simply been no one to speak up for him.  Morse won't have Joycie told about any of it.  He's sorely tempted, that first long night in the cells, after the other prisoners learn he's a copper and before he's isolated for his own safety.  But he can imagine the snide certainty in his stepmother's voice if she finds out: _pride cometh_ , Gwen would say primly, and then, less Biblically though still audible under her breath, _lie down w'dogs_. (Months later, Morse will find himself oddly touched when Dr. DeBryn lets it slip that Jim Strange had got himself thrown out of the City Arms pub at a New Year’s do, defending Morse’s good name against the slurs of the PCs who usually drank there).

Since becoming bagman for DI Thursday, Morse has been present at more than a few arrests, but Thursday does his work thoroughly so first time Morse is present at the release of an imprisoned suspect, _he_ is the suspect.  The process is anti-climactic.  He’s walked from his cell to the charge desk, where the accusation is read aloud in all its curiously antiquated formality (“alleged that on that day, in the city of Oxford, the accused did willfully and deliberately bring about the death, by strangulation, of…”).  Then the reason for the dismissal of charges is appended—namely that the death by strangulation had been brought about by someone else entirely.  Morse is asked to sign both the amended charge sheet and a receipt for items in his possession at the time of his arrest.  He notices, vaguely, that the label on the small box of his belongings is misspelled; they’ve left the ‘a’ out of his Christian name.  And then, just like that, he’s led to a door and deposited on a street.  The sun is just coming up on a late January Monday in the outskirts of Oxford, and Endeavour Morse is a free man.

There’s no one to meet him, of course, and no one to call.  Morse stands in the empty street, savoring the novelty of _quiet_ , for a full five minutes before it occurs to him that the little pasteboard box contains his billfold, and the billfold contains enough money for a bus ticket into Oxford city centre.  There box also contains his keys; his wristwatch—an unimaginative but accurate school-leaving present—;the program from a student concert that he’d happened to have in his jacket pocket on the night of his arrest; two pens; his notebook; and the little wallet holding his warrant card. Morse runs his thumb along the worn leather, wondering what use it is to him now, still suspended pending an investigation that is no one’s priority.  “Ecclesiastes, 5: 15,” says a voice in the back of his head, so distractingly like his father’s that Morse almost doesn’t notice the woolen fabric that lines the bottom of the box.  His scarf, the one Monica had bought him from Burridge’s Department Store, just long enough before Christmas that it wouldn’t seem like a holiday present. 

“I didn’t get you anything,” he’d said when she’d given it to him, so unexpected that he’d been startled into the truth. He’d cursed himself silently before the words were even out his mouth.  No chance to slip out now and pick up something.  What was it about Monica that got ‘round his inner censor so quickly?

“Oh, it’s nothing like that,” Monica had demurred, her capable hands already busy tidying the wrapping paper. “Only there was a sale on and you’ll catch your death in that coat of yours.”

Morse’s coat is perfectly serviceable, the veteran of several winters more northern than Oxford’s.  But he’s always been bad at keeping track of mittens and mufflers, has lost numerous umbrellas, never took to wearing a hat.  It astonishes him that Monica has noticed.  He’s not used to being _seen._

As it happened, he’d spent Christmas in prison.  Just as well he hadn’t bothered with any presents.

The scarf had been left behind at the scene of the crime to implicate Morse. If it’s been returned, then the police have really finished with him.  Morse feels a sudden, unexpected prickle in his eyes.  Things aren’t over—he’s still suspended, he still hasn’t heard a word about DI Thursday—but _this_ part, his part, is finished at last. 

Morse still has the scarf gripped in one hand when the red-headed bus conductress calls his stop ("Oxford or change!") and he has to hustle down the aisle.  He shivers as he steps out into the morning damp.  When he...went in, it was still dark winter; now the year has turned, though Oxford will be permeated with a stony chill for a few months yet.  Even so, Morse can’t quite bring himself to wear the scarf. It is, after all, a murder weapon. He tucks it into his pocket and crams the box into a nearby bin. 

Before his arrest, Morse’s days off were rare and filled with a single man’s chores: laundry, since he hadn’t enough of a wardrobe to go for too long without ironing; a bit of shopping (tea, tinned soup, whiskey); a rare trip to a second-hand bookshop, a rarer trip to the cinema.  Before Monica, he’d often find himself at a loose end and, more often than not, back at Cowley Road station whether he was on the rota to work or not.   What might look to others like a sudden flash of inspiration had been the result of late nights at his desk and early mornings considering the evidence table.

Even as a student, there had been tutorials to attend, essays to write, revising.  Honestly, Morse can’t think of the last time he’d been in Oxford with nothing to do.  He hesitates at the bus stop, mentally mapping a route to DI Thursday’s house.  He knows the route well, having been frequently dispatched as Thursday’s driver.  But he can’t simply knock on the door this morning.  Who would answer? Thursday’s daughter, Joan?  Sam? Or Mrs. Thursday?  Morse can’t decide who would be worse.

Morse is disinclined to return to his lodging, but he has nowhere else to go.  Any moment, there will be foot patrol coming across the Broad on their regular morning rounds.  He wonders if Jim Strange will be among their number.  Or perhaps by now he’s passed his sergeant’s exam, ready for greater things and pastures new.  He checks his watch.  If Monica is on nights, as she was six weeks ago, she’ll still be asleep.  That’s what decides him, finally.  He’d received notice in prison that his landlord was terminating the lease—he was no longer of ‘good moral character’—but perhaps something had been left behind. 

The landlady, Mrs. Macomber, is not overly pleased to see him, except in that she’ll finally have a corner of her spare room back.

“That girl, the dark one, she packed you up,” says Mrs. Macomber, leading him through to the short tower of stacked boxes.  “If sommat’s missing, you’ll have to take it up with her.”    

“No, I’m sure everything’s fine,” Morse says automatically. Already, he recognizes the suitcase he’d brought from Carshall Newtown, the phonograph in its case, a crate with his LPs, a cardboard box of books, another one with odds and ends.  The room had come furnished; he’s not sure how he’d acquired so many possessions.

 “You’ll be taking it now, then?”

Morse gives his former landlady the sort of cool glance DI Thursday usually reserves for witnesses, the one that tells them he’ll move in his own good time.  He’s astonished to find it still works.

“Only, I’ve got to nip out to the butcher’s and get back for my John’s tea,” Mrs. Macomber apologizes, almost cowed.  “And I’ll be locking up.”

Which reminds Morse that he has his own reasons for wanting to be out of the place before too much more of the morning has passed.  “I’ll take what I can carry right now,” he says, “and be back for the rest as soon as I can.”

Mrs. Macomber looks like she’s going to object, but then she turns on her heel and walks out, leaving a cloud of talcum and tobacco in her wake. 

Morse is adding a few of his favorite records to his case, wrapping them carefully in his red jumper, when the landlady returns with a handful of papers.  “Your post.  I wasn’t sure where to send it.”   

There’s not much—a form letter from the gas board, the quarterly newsletter of the Oxford Scholars Choral Association, and then, peculiarly, an envelope in handwriting Morse can’t quite place.  He stuffs the letter into his pocket to leave his hands free: one for his case, now weighed down with books and records, the other for his record player.  It’s pretty much exactly what he brought to Oxford when he came with the contingent from the police barracks.  For that matter, it’s pretty much exactly what he was carrying when he first came up as a student.

Morse makes it as far as the bench by the Radcliffe Camera, the one where Inspector Fred Thursday was known to stop and mull over his pipe, before he has to admit he doesn’t know where to go next.  The crinkle of papers in his coat pocket reminds him of the mysterious envelope.

“Dear Pagan,” the letter begins, on notepaper from a London club, and Morse skips immediately to the signature… Anthony. Anthony Donn.  They’d had digs on the same stairwell, shared a few tutorials—Morse recalls coaxing Anthony through a sophomore seminar on early modern poetry.  That’s why the handwriting had seemed so familiar: no doubt the box of books Monica had packed included a few anthologies with Anthony’s notes still in the margins.    

Morse allows himself to count Anthony among his few friends from his student days, largely because he knew even then the feeling wasn’t really reciprocated.  To Anthony, Morse was just one of many college acquaintances, eccentric, occasionally useful, but hardly essential. Anthony’s mother came from money, his father came from a long line of Foreign Office mandarins, and Anthony himself had all the popularity and social grace that Morse himself lacked. Given his own great expectations, it was hardly surprising that Anthony never spared a thought for Morse's (and thus set himself blessedly apart from Morse's father, stepmother, neighbors from home, tutors, teachers, scholarship committees... the constant chorus reminding Morse of his duties and obligations). In fact, Tony always seemed slightly surprised to encounter Morse at a tutorial or on the Broad. It was as though he forgot about Morse completely when they weren't together, and perhaps he did, but Tony always seemed genuinely delighted to rediscover him. And in the end, Tony, though a mediocre scholar, had been a surprisingly loyal friend. 

“Had a great-uncle—maybe a great-great?—who bought a commission with the Queen’s Bengal Lancers, once,” Tony had reported laconically when he’d heard of Morse’s sudden decision to leave the university and join the Royal Signal Corps.  “Whole family says it was the making of him. You will write?”

Everyone else had been predicting doom and misery, talking of wasted opportunities, while Anthony had been imagining Morse hunting tigers with the cream of the Raj.  So like Anthony.  But, to be fair, when Morse had written, Tony had responded promptly: quick, light notes recounting Oxford parties, care of the RS battalion HQ.  It had been Morse who had gradually stopped replying, ashamed and more than a little jealous.

Anthony, as his latest letter reveals, still has the easy generosity that comes from never having wanted for anything.   Several of his numerous cousins have had run-ins with the law or scandals in the paper, so he is refreshingly blasé about what he refers to delicately as Morse’s “recent misfortune.”  "Recognized a distinctive name in the _Mail,"_ Tony writes, and wondered if he couldn’t prevail upon Morse to look in on his parents’ old cottage out on Lake Silence. “You may remember the place,” he adds casually.

Morse snorts.  As though sophomoric midnight picnics had been a highlight of his university years. 

Except, of course, Morse _does_ remember.  Even brushing the fringes of Anthony’s social life had been like a magical circus after his solitary adolescence, and odd details have burned themselves into Morse’s memory. The family had always called it 'the dacha,' since it had been purchased after Anthony’s father had whiled away a tropical posting reading all of Tolstoi and fantasizing about a return to the land.  That had morphed into vague plans for a lavish summer house that had never come to fruition.  The only structure had been a fishing hut: one large room, electricity, but no heat, Morse recalls.  There had been a few other large estates on the lake, of the sort that no one could staff since before the war.    

Anthony writes that he has left a key at the Lonsdale Porter’s Lodge, Morse can call for it at any time—and of course, Tony would think nothing of the arrangement.  Another person might urge caution, might be leery of giving a recently released prisoner access to a family house, even if the house is a shack best suited for collegiate shenanigans, even if the prisoner has been thoroughly exonerated.  But Tony would simply blink, wide-eyed,at such suggestions, and say with that airy, upper-class confidence, “Yes, but I _know_ Pagan Morse, you see…” Then he'd go blithely ahead with his initial plan of leaving keys _poste restante_ for an old and distant acquaintance who may or may not ever retrieve them.

 _And_ , Morse thinks, _aren't I lucky that he's done just that?_   Not a word from the Oxford City constabulary but, in a curious way, an unexpected gift from Oxford itself: that old-boys' network that has never served him before has finally come to his aid.  A shack on Lake Silence, where no one will ever think to look for him.   Tony writes that he'll be in town soon, "shall stop in to see how you're getting on,"...but just as likely, he'll take a fancy to the Scottish Highlands or the South of France.  No telling with Tony.   Morse consults his watch: he can be at Lonsdale before noon, and after that, out of Oxford.  After all, what's to keep him?


End file.
